521 
J5 
opy 1 




QUAKER HILL 
SERIES 



XIL Zhc Book dFarmer. 



BY 



EDWARD H. JENKINS, Ph. D. 



The Quaker Hill Conference is held an- 
nually, the first week in September, at 
Quaker Hill, Dutchess County, N. Y. It is 
a gathering for the promotion of Bible 
study, for the discussion of vital problems 
of the present day and for the quickening 
of the spiritual life. 



THE BOOK FARMER 



V 



AN ADDRESS 

BY 

EDWARD H. JENKINS, Ph. D. 

1/ 

DIRECTOR OF THE CONNBCTICITT AGUIC0LTURAL irXPKRUIE.ST 
STATION, NEW HAVEN, ClONNECTICUT. 



READ AT THE FIFTH ANNT'AL MEETING OF THE 

QUAKER HILL CONFERENCE, AUGUST THE 

FIFTEENTH, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND 

THREE. 



Published bt the Qcae.br Hill Conferenck Association 

QuAEER Hill, New York. 

1904 



Publications .'i> ^ 

Of the QUA.KER Hill Conference Association 



A Critical study of the Bible, by Rev. Newton M. 
Hall of Springfield, Mass. 

The Relation of the Church at Home to the 
Church Abroad, by Rev. George William Knox, D. D., of 
New York. 

A Tenable Theory of Biblical Inspiration, by 
Prof. Irving Francis Wood of Northampton, Mass. 

The Book Farmer, by Edward H. Jenkins, Ph. D., of 
New Haven, Codb. 

LOCAL HISTORY SERIES 

David Irish — A Memoir, by his daughter, Mrs. PhcBbe 
T. Wanzer of Quaker Hill, N. Y. 

Quaker Hill in the Eijjhteenth Century, by Rev. 
Warren H. Wilson of Brooklyn, N. Y. 

Quaker Hill in tlie Nineteenth Century, by Rev. 
Warren H. Wilson of Brooklyn. N. Y. 

Hiram B. Jones and His School, by Rev. Edward L. 
Chichester of Quaker Hill, N, Y. 

Richard Osborn — A Reminiscence, by Margaret B. 
Monahan of Quaker Hill, N, Y. 

Albert J. Akin — A Tribute, by Rev. Warren H. Wilson 
of Brooklyn. N, Y, 

Ancient Homes and £arly Days at Quaker Hill, 
by Amanda Akin Stearns of Quaker Hill, N. Y, 

Thomas Taber and ICd'war^ Shove — A Reminiscence 
—by Rev. Benjamin Shove •of** 5lew York. 

Any one of these publications may be had by addressing 
the Secretary, Rbv. EowARn L. Chichester. 

Quaker Hill, N. Y. 
Price Ten Cents. Twelve Cents Postpaid. 

Gift 
PublitlMV 



THE BOOK FARMER. 
o 

I am to speak for a little while this even- 
ing on The Book Farmer. The term itself 
is almost obsolete. It belongs to the medi- 
eval period of American Farming, and is 
ready to perish. 

Today every American farmer is, in some 
sense, a book farmer. He cannot but be 
one. He may deride the name, he may 
scorn books, he may refuse or neglect to 
read them, but for all that and in spite of 
himself he is, in some sense, to some ex- 
tent, a book farmer. 

In a conference of this kind, it will not, I 
hope, be out of place to show what 1 mean 
in this fashion. We are all, in a certain 
sense, Christians. We may deny the dog- 
ma, we may refuse the name, we may be 
u nchristian in much of our conduct. Yet 
our law, our social life, our political econ- 
omy, even our business practice, — evil and 
immoral as it is in many ways, — is tinc- 
1 



tured with the Christi^^n spirit. The prin- 
ciples of the Sermon on the Mount shine 
through all our civilization. The Christian 
attitude of mind towards the problems of 
life we have inherited from our forefathers; 
it is in our blood and we cannot, if we 
will, rid ourselves of it. 

Many of us, whose intellectual beliefs 
may have wandered very far from the for- 
mal creeds of the Christian church, yet call 
ourselves Christians, for we see that while 
some must struggle after new light and 
tight what they regard as serious errors of 
doctrine, and search the foundations of be- 
lief, it is for us who are doing the world's 
common work under a Christian civilization 
to which we are bound, not to spend much 
time in kicking against the pricks, but to 
make of ourselves the very best Christian 
men and women that we can; to do out 
the dailv duty, which needs all our care, 
knowing that the abstract truth will come 
in good time, without our care, like the 
morning. 

Now the farmer lives surrounded by 
books, and reading and readers. Every 
day he reads or hears of what was done 
yesterday in every corner of the earth. 
Fvery day new books come from the press, 
2 



discussing every last item of human knowl- 
edge, — some of them also, it must be con- 
fessed, discussing, in many pages, things 
about which it is perfectly clear that at 
present we know nothing, — and these new 
books are eagerly read in city and country 
as a part almost of the daily food. 

Moreover, there is more published infor- 
mation, cheaply or gratuitously furnished, 
regarding the business of farming than re- 
garding any other business, and there is no 
business which has been so materially 
stimulated and improved in its methods by 
this published matter as the business of 
farming. In my own state, within my 
memory, dairying, fruit growing, tobacco 
growing and cattle feeding have been al- 
most revolutionized, largely by aid of sci- 
entific research and the publication in pop- 
ular form and free distribution of the re- 
sults of such work. It is in the air. It is 
a matter of common discussion. The 
practice and the results of book-farming 
are seen everywhere. 

Can a man farming in the midst of all 
thfs by any means protect himself against 
its influences ? Surely not. As well might 
he stand in the pouring rain and insist that 
he never allowed himself to get wet. That 
3 



is what I mean by saying that every Amer- 
ican farmer is, in some sense, a book farmer. 

There are two sorts of them, as there are 
two sorts of Christians. The one sort 
came by his book farming or by his kind of 
Christianity just as the catechism says we 
all came by that mysterious thing '" original 
sin;" that is, "by ordinary generation," by 
inheritance, and unconsciously. The other 
gets his book farming by labor and pains. 
Now let us be of this second kind, worthy 
of our time and of our opportunities. 
That is the text of my farm sermon. 

What is farming ? 

The farmer, and with him 1 include the gra- 
zier, provides the food, and that means the 
energy, for the world's work. Every piece 
of work that is done by animals, wheth- 
er it be drawing a load, digging a trench or 
writing a poem, is possible only by an ex- 
penditure of physical energy. This energy 
cannot be created by the animal, but is 
latent in the food which it eats and is 
merely developed by the animal from its 
food. Follow back now the food of animals 
and men and seek the source of its energy, 
its power for work, and you will find it 
always and only in field crops which draw 
it, not from the earth, but from the sun. 
4 



The world does not supply energy to run 
itself any more than does a steam engine. 
This energy comes from the sun and is col- 
lected and held and stored in crops gath- 
ered either by hand or by grazing. Not 
by the throbbing of any mighty machinery 
of human building, nor in the confused 
bustle and roar of the city, is fresh power 
brought into this world, but rather from 
the quiet hillsides basking in the sun, from 
fertile, cultivated valleys and from the broad 
solitudes of grazing lands, where our crops 
and our pastures in silence and without 
observation do this mighty work. 

To increase the efficiency of crops in 
gathering this sun energy, and to store 
and supply it for the world, is farming. 
The farmer's work is the foundation, the 
necessary beginning of all human activity. 

Let us notice some of the things in- 
volved in this work. 

The idea that the farmer puts in his seed 
in the spring, kills some weeds during sum- 
mer, takes an abundant harvest in the fall, 
and that the Lord does all the rest is a com- 
mon and a pretty one, but rather crude. 
Farming, like every other business, is fight- 
ing. 

There was a time, in the days of the early 
5 



settlers, when the flint-lock musket was as 
necessary a farming tool as the plow — and it 
is admitted that farming then was a fight. 
But today the farmer must carry a knapsack 
sprayer if not a musket and he has to fight 
with the weather, with the soil, with fungi 
and with a multitude of insects more nu- 
merous than Indians, which are always 
likely to scalp, — not his family, to be sure, 
— but his crops. 

Crop production depends, of course, in 
the first place, on the conditions of weath- 
er, temperature and rainfall, and it is a 
common saying, true enough in a way. 
that we cannot help the weather. Of 
course, if it rains not at all, or rains every 
day, all our work is in vain. But such a 
state of things never occurs here. We 
sometimes have long periods of drought 
and again very wet seasons, when our 
crops suffer greatly, to be sure, but are not 
entirely cut off, and in such times as these 
we CAN help the weather; especially can 
we help a deficient rainfall. We cannot 
draw rain out of the sky, to be sure, but 
we can draw it out of the earth with the 
cultivator, which is the Eastern farmer's 
irrigating plant. That old book farmer, 
Jetho Tull, opened the way with his essays 
6 



on horse cultivation, and the book farmer 
of today is alive to its importance. Let 
me give an illustration or two. 

The summer of 1900 was exceptionally 
dry. Peaches set well, but there was not 
enough rainfall to carry out the crop, and 
in many orchards the fruit withered or was 
small and the foliage turned yellow. But 
not far from my home was a fifty acre 
orchard set on a hill, the foliage shining from 
afar, dark green up to harvest time, and a 
crop of five baskets to the tree of prime 
peaches; while others having the same soil 
and exposure failed. Why was it ? The 
owner knew that very shallow and con- 
stant cultivation was as good as a mulch, 
and tremendously checked the drying out 
of the soil, leaving the water already in it 
for the use of his crop. Every day from 
late June till late August he had the cultiva- 
tor going through his orchard, and after 
marketing his peaches for about $1.00 a 
basket he knew that it paid. 

"Cannot help the weather?" forsooth. 
But you can. 

In February following that season he and 

his son both fell sick of pneumonia. But 

he did not make his will nor send for the 

minister. He told his doctor to get two 

7 



of the best trained nurses he could find and 
call a city physician in consultation, "for," 
said he, "I've got to be alive with all the 
spring work coming on ! " And he was. 

Now an example of the other sort. I 
know poor book farmers of the unconscious 
sort, who believes cultivation in dry weath- 
er helps tobacco because it throws damp 
earth against the stalks; and they cultivate 
deep and half ruin their crops sometimes, 
not understanding that all the earth you 
stir dries out the more for the stirring and 
that, to keep land from drying out, the 
shallower you cultivate the better. 

Let us pass on from the weather, about 
which Mr. Warner remarked that there was 
•' a great deal said, and nothing done." 

Most of the dry matter in our crops comes 
out of the air and not out of the soil, as 
many people are apt to think. It is safe to 
say that at least nine-tenths of the dry mat- 
ter of all our farm crops comes in this way. 
But farm experience and laboratory exper- 
iment both show that the mineral matter 
supplied by the soil, though relatively small 
in quantity, is absolutely essential to the 
life of the crop. Chemistry has shown us 
what particular mineral matters are essen- 
tial and what are of no use, and also which 



of the essential things are most commonly 
deficient in our farm lands. Our book 
farming and our farm experience have 
taught us that the use of manures and of 
commercial fertilizers is often necessary and 
profitable and that success always depends 
upon the skill with which they are used. 
The crop must always be fed by the farmer, 
but manures and fertilizers are not the only 
means of feeding it. Thorough tillage will 
often supply all that the crop needs of 
plant food, by unlocking it from its combi- 
nations in the soil, making it soluble and 
thus available to the crop. Not always and 
everywhere will commercial fertilizers pay. 
They should be the last resort of the book 
farmer. When his land is well drained and 
yet has sufficient water, when the stable ma- 
nure has been all well handled and applied, 
and when the owner is ready to follow up 
all with thorough tillage, then, and not till 
then, will it pay him to consider commer- 
cial fertilizers to put just the last touch on 
the razor edge of the crop production. 

The poor book farmer looks upon com- 
mercial fertilizers as a kind of patent med- 
icine good to cure every fault of the land or 
the farming. It is pretty clear that the re- 
9 



lations of chemistry as well as soil physics 
to farming are very close. 

To properly feed the crop and to protect 
it, as far as can be done, from the vagaries 
of our climate, are but a small part of the 
work of farming. Every year farming be- 
comes more and more a fight with fungi, 
bacteria and with insects, — a fight which 
would be perfectly hopeless without the 
constant aid which science gives, which 
the thrifty book farmer takes intelligently, 
and which finally, by round-about ways, 
reaches the comprehension of the unwill- 
ing and scoffing book farmer. 

The Irish famine was largely the result 
of the potato rot, a fungous disease which 
is found wherever potatoes are grown, 
whenever the season favors its develop- 
ment. It is not very long ago that we knew 
neither what caused nor what cured it. Now 
we know both ; thanks to the studies of bot- 
anists and to those who have made practical 
application of their work, and those who 
raise the most and best potatoes for mar- 
ket would no more omit the use of the 
preventive Bordeaux mixture than they 
would omit hoeing the crop. 

Some years ago we found a man about 
to cut down his quince orchard because 
10 



the trees were "blighted," as he expressed 
it, each year and bore no sound fruit. The 
trouble was a fungous disease very preva- 
lent there, called leaf spot, which turned 
the foliage brown and prevented the 
growth of any healthy wood. This had 
infected the orchard ever since it was set 
out. He was willing we should treat it, 
so the alternate rows were well sprayed 
with Bordeaux mixture, leaving the others 
unsprayed for an object lesson. At the end 
of the first year the sprayed rows had made 
a fresh growth of wood and the foliage 
was almost perfect. There was little fruit, 
none of it good, because there was no sec- 
ond year wood to bear it. But we had 
banished the disease from the sprayed 
trees. The next year the treatment was 
repeated, and from his sprayed rows he sold 
$75.00 worth of fruit at a special price be- 
cause it was so large and fair. From the un- 
sprayed rows he did not get a dozen sound 
quinces. But the best thing he got out of 
it was the knowledge that plants have their 
infectious diseases, as well as animals, that 
any infectious disease is a preventable dis- 
ease, and that sanitation in the orchard and 
garden is just as necessary for the health 
of plants and the success of the farmer as 

n 



sanitation in city and country is necessary 
for tile public health. 

But this result in the quince orchard 
would have been impossible, but tor the 
laboratory studies of scientific men, who 
perhaps had no thought of any practical 
results, and for the studies of other men 
who were seeking chiefly a practical re- 
sult. For the success of the work it was 
necessary to know the name of that par- 
ticular fungus, how it grew and fruited 
and where it spent the winter and at what 
season it first attacked the leaves, things 
which no practical farmer has time or 
equipment to find out by his own observa- 
tion. But any farmer in this room can, with 
very little trouble and with no expense, 
find out just what to do if his quinces are 
infected with the leaf spot, which, in most 
cases is all he wants, or he can learn all 
that is known regarding this pest. Isn't 
it worth his while to be a book farmer ? 

Not less destructive than the fungi are 
the hordes of insects which the farmer has 
to fight and which every year take millions 
of dollars from the income of farmers: — 
the cotton boll weevil, the chinch bug, the 
locust, the codling moth, the San Jose 
scale and a host of others. Each has a dif- 
12 



ferent habit, life history, time of occurrence 
and vulnerable point where it may be suc- 
cessfully attacked. All these things must 
be learned by specialists who devote their 
lives to such work: the entomologists. 
But the farmer must get at the results of 
their studies from books or from their 
readers in order to protect himself. 

The canker worm formerly attacked al- 
most yearly our elms in New Haven, which 
were the pride of our city, took off most of 
their leaves in June and threatened in time 
to kill them. Nothing was done but to talk 
and grumble at the bad taste of the Eng- 
lish sparrows who would not eat them, 
till the entomologist pointed out that the 
female was wingless and that the newly 
hatched young did all the damage. Tarred 
bands about the tree trunks for a few 
months each year keeps the adult females 
from creeping up the trees and saves the 
foliage from all harm of this sort. 

Just one illustration more. The dreaded 
San Jose scale is in our orchards and has 
been there unobserved for some time, mul- 
tiplying and sapping the life of the trees. 
The eastern States are pretty generally in- 
fected. It is an insidious thing, being quite 
small and inconspicuous and often its pres- 
13 



ence is only suspected when the trees be- 
come sickly. We are just in the midst of 
a fight with it. The best means of de- 
stroying it has not yet perhaps been devised 
but our most successful fruit growers, who 
have followed all that has in done in labor- 
atories and orchards by way of experiment, 
have already learned enough to work in- 
telligently and are keeping it in check and 
will, I believe, keep it off from their orch- 
ards and get well paid for their intelli- 
gence. Others are waiting to see " what 
luck " their competitors have with their 
book farming, and will lose many of their 
trees and most of their profit before they 
borrow a spraying outfit and get their 
coats off. 

One more thing. Farming is business. 
There was a time when a distinction was 
made between the three "callings," viz., 
learned professions, business and farming; 
the last being looked upon as quite as differ- 
ent from business as it was from law or 
medicine. Whatever truth there may have 
been in this a century ago has gone out of 
it. Farming now must be managed as any 
other kind of business venture is managed. 
The farmer is a producer or, if you will, a 
manufacturer. He has something to sell 

14 



which is a product of paid labor, and to 
sell in open competition with all other far- 
mers. He has to buy labor and materials 
for his business. He has to find his mar- 
ket and he must watch it. 1 believe there 
are as good opportunities of financial suc- 
cess in farming as in most other kinds of 
legitimate business, but that the most 
common cause of partial or complete failure 
m it is, not lack of industry or skill in pro- 
duction, but lack of the business instinct in 
trading; in buying and selling. 

Not long ago, in a farmer's institute in 
my own state, during a discussion on the 
construction of stables, there up-ended 
himself a quaint looking man with a sol- 
emn face but a very keen eye, and said, 
" Mr. Chairman, the last speaker talks 
about 'clear pine.' What kind of clear 
pine do we git when we call for it ? Why, 
farmers' clear pine. 1 ordered some a 
while ago and it's out there on the track 
now. Runs abaout twelve knots to the 
foot and half on 'em is aout. We loo k 
around this state and what do we see ? 
We see farmers payin' more for raisin' their 
stuff than they git for it when it is raised, 
and they're tryin' to live on the difference.'* 

That is a plain and truthful and pathetic 
15 



picture of the curse of too many Connecti- 
cut farmers. I hope there are none of that 
kind hereabouts. 

Let me give you an illustration of what I 
mean. 

A man in the eastern part of my own 
state some years ago bought a thousand 
Japanese plum trees of Mr. Hale, our great 
fruit man. He paid for them and Hale 
heard nothing more for a while, but one 
day he got a postal from this customer 
which read, " Mr. Hale, if you want to see 
plums come down here." Hale didn't 
want to see any plums except his own just 
then, which were keeping him busy, but 
having business in Providence, he stopped 
off for a few hours just to take a look at his 
friend's fruit. He found his house, but his 
wife said her husband was off down the road 
with the team. Could she tell him where 
the plum trees were ? Oh yes, they were 
five minutes walk down the road on the 
left, so down there he went. The trees 
and land had been well cared for. The 
trees were full, too full, of ripe plums. 
They were dropping already and the ground 
was thick with the luscious fruit, ripe and 
rotting. Hale was made almost wild with 
the waste of it and the owner was "down 
16 



the road." Soon became in sight, jogging 
home with some crates in his cart, and joy- 
fully greeted Hale with the remark, "Pretty 
thick, ain't they?' "Man!" shouted 
Hale, "what are you doing with them." 
"Well," said he, "I'm peddlin' down the 
road." " Do you know you've got $500 
worth of stuff going to waste here, with 
your infernal 'peddlin' down the road? ' " 
"Well," said the farmer, "they've got 
a little ahead of me, but what can I do ?" 
"Do?" said Hale, "Jump. That's what. 
Is there a telephone within five miles?" 
There was, and under Hale's outpouring, 
the man jumped, the horse jumped, every- 
thing jumped. He sent a telegram to New 
York for crates and baskets to come up on 
the afternoon boat, he telephoned a Provi- 
dence commission man to take care of the 
shipment to be sent him the next night, 
he made the man engage pickers to be 
there at daylight, and the owner of the 
orchard had to spend all he had taken in 
" pedlin' down the road " for telephone and 
telegraph, and his knees smote together at 
the outlay, but they saved the greater part 
of the crop. There are samples of two 
Connecticut fruit farmers. Mr. Hale is a 
business farmer. He knows all the fruit 
17 



markets, all the commission men, all the 
freight agents, all his competitors, all the 
fruit prices, and all the tricks of all of them. 
Nothing in fruit or in trade about fruit 
escapes him. The other man is learning. I 
don't believe he will ever be caught as badly 
again. 

Bear with one other tale by way of illus- 
tration. The year when the grippe first 
appeared in this country and was so fatal, 
a farmer told me he was pushing his straw- 
berry fields all he could and was cleaning up 
all his old beds which he had planned to 
plow up, because strawberries would be 
a paying crop. I asked the reason, which 
he gave. It was because of the great mor- 
tality from grippe. One great business in 
the city where he marketed was the making 
of coffin trimmings. He said factories were 
running overtime, the men were making 
great wages, would have money to spend, 
and the first fresh fruit would surely 
catch their money — and it did! The story 
is rather gruesome, but that man had the 
business instinct. He was looking for a 
market and suiting his work to meet a fore- 
seen demand. 

What I have tried to show with homely 
illustration are these things: 
18 



The problem of the farmer is a scientific 
problem: to secure energy from the sun 
for the use of the world as largely and as 
cheaply as he can and sell it as well as he 
can. 

In his work he is constantly fighting un- 
favorable physical conditions; deficient or 
excessive rainfall, deficient sunlight and 
the exhaustion of his soil. 

His crops are exposed to infectious and 
devastating diseases, — the work of fungi 
and bacteria, — and they are attacked by 
many kinds of insects which, unless 
checked, will work ruin. 

These diseases and insect attacks can 
only be successfully fought when the na- 
ture and habits of the enemy are known, 
and this knowledge can only be obtained 
by a trained specialist. The farmer has 
neither the time nor the equipment for such 
work. 

Moreover, he meets other obstacles, fully 
as great as any of these, in business com- 
petition. It is not only the nature of his 
soil and climate which determines for him 
what crops he can or cannot profitably raise. 
The matter is often settled for him by rail- 
road transportation rates, by the business 
outlook, even by public health. 
19 



To succeed he must be not simply a tiller 
of the soil, but a keen man of business; 
quick to take advantage of the market, to 
foresee a time of scarcity, and to meet it in 
selling and avoid it in buying. He must 
have the business instinct. 

Now the farmer cannot be a physician, 
a chemist, a botanist, an entomologist, and 
a student of market conditions, but he 
needs must have the help of them all. That 
help today is freely offered and readily ac- 
cessible to him in print. Does it need any 
talk to demonstrate that he must be a reader 
or fail of entire success ? I think not. 

Then let us talk no more about it, but 
rather consider for a few minutes how he 
shall read and what he shall read. Books 
have been written on How to Read. I am 
helpless to do more than offer one or two 
hints specially regarding f:irm literature. 

For one thing, the farmer must read as 
he would listen to the talk of a new ac- 
quaintance, with a wide-awake judgment 
of what he reads or hears. There is noth- 
ing inspired or infallible in a printed page. 
The writer is likely to be more guarded in 
his statements than the casual speaker, but 
he cannot tell the whole truth. He cannot 
avoid the chance of being unconsciously 
20 



misleading in some of his statements. He 
may be too positive or he may be over-cau- 
tious. The reader must constantly weigh 
and judge and take what is written in the 
light of his own judgment. 

For another thing, the book farmer 
should not read his farm books as the 
kitchen girl reads her cook book, expecting 
to find just the particular direction and re- 
ceipt which will insure success. Farming 
cannot be reduced to any such simplicity. 
Farm books and farm reading are a help, 
an indispensible help, but they are not the 
farmer himself. They are tools, like his 
plow and cultivator and harvester, which 
cannot be taken directly from the ware- 
house to the field, but must always be ad- 
justed, set, and prepared by the use of 
common sense to the special job on hand. 
What he reads will, in most cases, need 
to be fitted in, by his own common sense, 
to the special conditions of his own farm 
and his own market; just as a joiner builds 
and fits into his plan of a house the ma- 
terials furnished him by the lumber dealer. 

Just one other thing in passing. Learn 

to read as an amusement, a diversion, not 

as a religious duty. Do you smoke ? So 

do I. It is a pernicious habit which ruins 

21 



the health. But if you smoke, you can un- 
derstand what I mean when I say, do your 
reading as you do your smoking — i. e., ac- 
cording to your mood, and at odd times, 
and have your reading as you have your 
pipe and tobacco, not neatly put up in the 
book-case, but always within reach of 
your easy chair. You can learn to do it. 
Here is a solid bulletin on the ripening of 
cheese, with a good many hard words in 
it, which requires attention and patience, 
but interests you. It is like that old briar 
wood of yours with a stem of rather small 
bore, which needs a strong pull and con- 
stant nursing to keep it lighted, but has a 
good flavor of its own and just suits your 
mood now and then. Here's another bul- 
letin with really nothing in it which you 
didn't know before, but skim it through, 
just as you take that other pipe, a trifling 
affair, with a free draft and small bowl 
into which you put some mild tobacco 
when you only have time for a few puffs. 
Here is a bulletin full of scientific names 
and polysyllables and technical descrip- 
tions, closing by saying, "No remedy has 
been found for this plant disease, which 
bids fair to be very destructive." Do with 
22 



that as you do with a Wheeling stogy, 
throw it in the fire half smoked. The butt 
of it is very bitter. Why spoil your diges- 
tion with it ? Then there is other litera- 
ture, rare as a choice Havana cigar, which 
you read as you smoke when you have a 
plenty of time to enjoy its incense, slowly, 
happily, only sorry that really delightful 
reading and really choice cigars are so 
scarce and hard to find. 

Now this last suggestion is not for the 
young who are to form " habits of study " 
and take "courses of reading," but for 
those of us who are older and pressed by a 
multitude of cares and who must make our 
reading a pleasure and relaxation, if we do 
it at all. 

As for the young, I repeat, smoking is a 
pernicious habit and only useful for pur- 
poses of illustration. 

And last of all, what shall the book farmer 
read ? 

He ought certainly to see all the Bulletins 
and Reports of your two agricultural sta- 
tions, the one at Geneva, the other at Cor- 
nell University in Ithaca, — both of them 
model institutions, — and he ought to read 
carefully in them all that bears on the farm 
topics in which he has an interest. These 
23 



he can get, as they are issued, without 
charge, for the asking. Is he a dairyman ? 
He will find in one bulletin analyses of all 
the feeding stuffs sold in this state and a 
discussion of their relative value, calling 
special attention to the inferior, worthless 
and adulterated brands. With an hour's 
attention he can learn which supply pro- 
tein in the cheapest form, and that is what 
he needs to buy, and which supply chiefly 
starch and woody fiber, which he can raise 
at home cheaper than he can buy. 

Is he thinking of buying commercial fer- 
tilizers ? He has at hand analyses of all the 
brands sold in New York, and can see just 
what is available for him and can compare 
prices and quality. 

In other bulletins he will find what has 
been done to prevent potato blight, the San 
Jose scale, fungous diseases of the grape, 
the raspberry, the black rot of cabbage and 
what is known as the pink rot of apples, 
discussions regarding the protection of 
shade trees, bean growing in this state, the 
cost and profits of poultry raising, and a 
great deal of interest and importance about 
cheese making. Bulletins on all these sub- 
jects have appeared from your stations 
24 



within the last year. You need this infor- 
mation. It is spot knowledge. 

There is the weekly agricultural paper 
which one cannot do without, for market 
reports and other information. Then one 
must have a paper relating to his particular 
branch of farming, dairying, bee-keeping, 
poultry raising or whatever it maybe. 

The book farmer also wants to know by 
TITLE all that is published by the U. S. 
Department of Agriculture, although much 
of it he will not care to read. And this is 
the way to do it. Write to the Division of 
Publications, of the U. S. Department of 
Agriculture at Washington, D. C, and ask 
to have sent you (or your grange) the 
Monthly List of Publications. This shows 
you at once what has been issued, where 
to get it and, if a charge is made for it, 
what that is. When a title promises well, 
send for the article. 

In these ways the book farmer can keep 
himself well informed on all that is newly 
issued relating to the problems of his par- 
ticular farm. Ought he to do any less than 
this, if he is making farming a real 
business ? 

And all this is perfectly possible for any 
one, even the very busy man, who gets 
25 



the habit of catching up and reading some- 
thing worth while in his spare minutes. 
This is but a small part of what he might 
read with profit, but I have exceeded the 
time 1 set for myself and I cannot catalogue 
any further. 

This farm sermon should close with a 
personal exhortation. For the comfort of 
our families, for the good of our own souls, 
for the joy of our own lives, let us be by 
all means book farmers, but not readers of 
farm books only. 

When one leads a busy life in a some- 
what isolated place there is danger that one 
will get out of touch with the world and 
with what is engaging its best thought. 
So one may lose company with others, be- 
come narrow and have no great thought to 
refresh himself withal when the pettiness 
of his own life and work comes over him. 
The best weapon of defense against all this 
is good reading. 

There is rest for body and soul in Lowell's 
Essays, Lanier's poems, Fiske's historical 
writings, Thackeray's novels and Kipling's 
Jungle Books. They, or books like them, 
should be in every house. Each season 
should mark some addition to their num- 
ber and considerable wear on the older 
26 



bindings. To hurry through books for the 
sake of "doing some reading " or keeping 
up with some reading circle is sinful. To 
read a good book, which one likes, half a 
dozen times through is righteous. 

Let us book farmers know something 
of books of travel, of history, of fiction, 
of poetry. Let us have, in the isolation of 
our farms, something of the sweet com- 
panionship of good literature ; a compan- 
ionship which knows no separation and is 
very safe from chanefe. 



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